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Higher and widescreen resolution. Redone character portraits. Real-time lighting. Less compressed audio. That's about the long and short of what's new in StarCraft: Remastered. For $15 you can bolt these nicer-looking and sounding features onto your existing copy of the 1998 classic. (Which, even if you somehow avoided buying a Battle Chest compilation for nearly 20 years, is now free in its unaltered form.)

I'll admit that this latest excuse to play the original StarCraft and its expansion, Brood War, appealed to me. Maybe it's because I was eight years old at the time, but the campaign's dark, sometimes comedic, sometimes horrific tale of space rednecks fighting giant bugs and psychic plant people has stuck with me like few games of the era. It certainly made more of an impression than the nonsensical science-fantasy soup that the series became across the StarCraft 2 trilogy.

Part of the StarCraft competitive scene is in the same boat, albeit for different reasons. "Quality of life" improvements, like better hotkeys and user interface options, made SC2 a fundamentally different experience than the first game and its expansion. It's more accessible for casual fans (like me), but high-level players have long expressed frustration that the sequels automate too much of Brood War's hands-on design. There's resurging interest in the original game among pro players and casters as a result.

New Zerg blood, same engine

This is Jimmy.

StarCraft's UI might not be efficient, but it sure does look nicer these days.

Original UI.

The added fidelity gives you a better look at what StarCraft structures were supposed to look like.

OG comparison.

Yep, all those little blood pools are still gross.

New particle effects look especially nice.

Not transformative, mind you, but for extra effects layered on top of the original code base, they're pretty solid.

The original game remains unchanged. Behind that 4K update, micro-managing worker units is much more tedious compared to SC2.

Widescreen gives a bigger view of the battlefield, but it doesn't change the game's "fog of war" clouds.

Tapping F5 switches to the game's original engine, and here, you can see how much the view changes without widescreen enabled.

Besides flipping between old and new art, you can also turn real-time lighting on and off.

Lights out in comparison.

StarCraft: Remastered feels specifically catered to them. It runs in the same client as the original game. The F5 key switches between the flashy and not-so-flashy graphics on the fly. The two "versions" of StarCraft interact with each other just fine in multiplayer. The only gameplay benefit that I can think of is that playing in widescreen might provide extra map awareness.

The rest of the remaster just gussies up the game that you've had two decades to make your mind up about. Longtime fans may appreciate the original gameplay's bump to a full screen, or the ability to stream a flashier version of the game on sites like Twitch.

It doesn't help me, however. Going back to Brood War, I sorely miss those same changes to SC2 that aggrieve top players. Control groups, capped at 12 units, feel tiny. Micromanaging my workers to start harvesting resources is painfully slow. I find myself constantly trying to queue building construction, only to remember I can't in this game. This completely upsets my rhythm.

I could readjust to the old, limited controls if I put the time in (they worked just fine for me in 1998), but other fundamental issues and design decisions drive my older self nuts. "Pathing"—the moment-to-moment decisions units make when walking around obstacles and each other—is far worse than I remember. 15 minutes in, I saw Hydralisks split up and walk single-file around a Starport to their doom, rather than group together and gang up on the one Goliath I told them to target. Micro-managing control groups and flitting back to base is one thing. Actively and constantly babysitting your units, due to weak AI, is another.

Staying in control

Want this menu to look snappier? Tap the F5 button, and...

...presto! More nebulas!

Occasional slideshows between missions lay certain story beats out in no uncertain detail.

Yeah, nicer. (We still have work to do to clear out the other campaign missions, obviously...)

Which isn't to say I don't see the appeal. StarCraft is as much a game of short-term skill as it is about long-term strategy. The remaster nods to that necessity with the addition of an in-game actions-per-minute counter. You can even set it to alert you if your movements drop below a certain frequency.

Watching that precision play out is impressive, and only more so with refreshed visuals. But try as I might, I couldn't really keep up with the few thousand weapons-grade players still searching for ranked matches after all these years. In my experience, matching into games took a little less than a minute. It takes me about that long to lose to a Zergling run, too.

That leaves players at my skill level with a consolation prize: a nostalgia trip through the single-player campaign. And, hey! That's still pretty good. User interface foibles aside, nothing has ever quite recaptured SC1's blend of backwoods sci-fi and high-concept horror. One minute your Vulture pilot is picking his nose and balking at orders. The next, a planet-killing warlord betrays you by throwing an all-devouring swarm at your favorite psychic commando. The game drips with personality, from the stilted claymation-y cutscenes to the annoyed responses of in-game units.

Said soldiers move and act just like they always have, frozen to the same animation cycles as in the original, but they look wonderful. In fact, the extra fidelity adds even more character to the already memorable game. Cracks in the terrain, foliage on withered trees, street signs in urban centers that you can actually read: they all place the faded character of the Milky Way's Koprulu Sector in sharper focus.

How do I look?

At least the sillier multiplayer modes are still going strong.

We probably won't dethrone the world's top Brood War players anytime soon.

Matchmaking is quick, even after all these years. So is losing, if you don't know what you're doing.

Losing in lower resolution.

We might be a little rusty.

I'm less universally sold on the game's character portraits—the close-ups you see when selecting units, or when talking heads spout exposition at you between missions. They're undeniably more technically impressive than the 20-year-old models. Many of the human characters, however, look more like generic "video game" characters than their old selves. Which is to say, they look more in line with StarCraft 2's art style.

Here, Jim Raynor isn't a soft-edged, small-town sheriff. He's another glowering, perfectly chiseled space marine. Kerrigan looks less like a TV fortune teller with space goggles and more like a high-tech super-soldier. Arcturus Mengsk looks at least 50 percent less like an older Kurt Russell.

Some players might like the idiosyncrasies born from the sloppier parts of StarCraft's controls. I, on the other hand, like the awkward, dirty look of its initial character models. These cleaned and straightened-out figures just don't quite mesh with the backwater future the rest of the game conveys.

They do spin that classic yarn about the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss duking it out across the galaxy, though. I'm sorely tempted to replay each of the factions' campaigns for the umpteenth time in my life. Remastered graphics were enough to spark my nostalgia for the campaign. A lack of modern conveniences found in real-time strategy games—many of which even bear the StarCraft brand and characters—didn't exactly fan the flame, however.

I just hope those competitive players who have already dedicated themselves to Brood War get what they're looking for.

The good:

Higher-resolution art looks great—especially in widescreen.

The style and tone of the campaign retain all their darkly comedic weirdness.

You can swap between old and new graphics with the press of a button.

It should look great for watching pro competitors.

The bad:

Some of the completely redone art is a little generic.

It feels fussy to play after years of improved UI in RTS games.

Unit pathfinding is all over the place.

The ugly:

Getting this close to falling down the rabbit hole of caring about my APM again.

Verdict: Buy it if you're still on the Brood War bandwagon. Try the free, old-school version if you're just curious how deep your nostalgia is for the game.

The benefit of not having played SCII for any real length of time is that I never adjusted to improved RTS controls - the ones in SCBW were the newest I've gotten comfortable with, so I jumped right back in like it was yesterday . . . clicking a million times on where I actually wanted groups of units to go and all.

Gotta side with the author on the portraits though - Raynor's re-imagining for SCII never sat well with me, and this seems to build on it. I always pictured a lanky shaved-head-with-stubble-all-over guy.

I'm a very happy man with all these new players influx. And ASL4 already announced for $90,000 (₩ 100,000,000) , with 1st place $54,000 (₩ 60,000,000)

Thankfully Blizzard still accommodates old geezer like me since I'm terrified by remastered contents and we can cross play. Getting used to newer stuff is hard for something that I played for 15 years.

Every time I let nostalgia glasses rule and pine for older games, I try to remember just how godawful the controls, AI, and general quality-of-life is on games like SC1.

At least for people who don't play like they've taken a good amount of meth.

Yeah, as nice as it is to get an updated remaster that stays true the original, I've grown to prefer source ports and the like, that while keeping the look of the original game, are not afraid to fix horrible controls, stupid AI, inconvenient UIs or add better looking/more efficient rendering.

Which, even if you somehow avoided buying a Battle Chest compilation for nearly 20 years, is now free in its unaltered form

Quote:

It runs in the same client as the original game. The F5 key switches between the flashy and not-so-flashy graphics on the fly. The two "versions" of StarCraft interact with each other just fine in multiplayer. The only gameplay benefit that I can think of is that playing in widescreen might provide extra map awareness.

This is only true because "the original game" is itself the remaster, just without widescreen or the improved grahpics and audio. This may sound like nitpick but the underlying game has been extensively worked on to support the new systems, matchmaking, etc.

The actual original game is obviously not compatible and even has different hardware requirements.

Wait, Protoss are 'plant people'? I guess they do 'subsist on light' - i.e. photosynthesis.

Yup, that makes them plants. Their thermodynamics are nonsense. They can subsist indefinitely on worlds with twilight level illumination where the meager number of photons hitting them somehow powers their extensive physical and mental prowess. It wasn’t so bad in the original game, but this foreshadows a lot of the Protoss = magic Warcraft people crap in SC2. It’s too bad- SC1 was definitely sci-if, SC2 was very much Warcraft in space.

The pathing IS terrible, and you can't queue buildings... but the overall game (story-wise, and just how well put-together it is as a package) is SO MUCH BETTER than SC2.

I've been having a hard time getting myself to play Legacy of the Void (although I have beaten Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm), but I was able to get sucked back into the SC1 campaign immediately.

And it's amazing how vigorously die-hard fans defend them to the death. Bad pathing is apparently a feature, since it takes experience and attention to know how it will fail and micromanage every unit's pathing. I'm of the opinion that fighting an engine is less important than fighting your opponents, and is a big source of rage quits.

Queued buildings would be a nice-to-have, I wouldn't mind playing SC1 with the option. It'd obviously have to be separate lobbies, segregated from non-queued play.

There's no question that the writing was better for SC1. SC2 is pretty unimaginative in that area. They go through this whole process in Wings of Liberty to revert Kerrigan to human-ish form, then abandon it entirely within the first two minutes of the Heart of the Swarm campaign. That is horrible design.

The SC2 campaigns are really way too short, considering they are three allegedly full length games.

Kerrigan was a great character in SC1. In SC2, even though she's sort of the main character of the whole story, she doesn't really have any depth to her.

There's no question that the writing was better for SC1. SC2 is pretty unimaginative in that area. They go through this whole process in Wings of Liberty to revert Kerrigan to human-ish form, then abandon it entirely within the first two minutes of the Heart of the Swarm campaign. That is horrible design.

The SC2 campaigns are really way too short, considering they are three allegedly full length games.

Kerrigan was a great character in SC1. In SC2, even though she's sort of the main character of the whole story, she doesn't really have any depth to her.

...not to mention that SC2 as a whole is a giant and bloated mess. It's 20 gigs... for an RTS! I feel like Blizzard tacked a bunch of crap on to the game to "influence" people to play multiplayer. I personally have ZERO interest in SC2 multiplayer. The game itself plays fine, but missions are slow loading, the game menus are confusing (and have multiple layers - actually getting into the campaign is a pain in the @$$), and I get the same kinds of advertising on the game's home screen that I do in Smite, trying to sell me on loot packs and letting me know about upcoming "events". Smite is a free-to-play game where they make their money by selling in-game cosmetic items. There is no single-player aspect to it, so they promote the game through events. SC2 is a game that I have paid ~$120 for in it's entirety just to play the single player campaign and I don;t appreciate having this extraneous garbage rammed down my throat.

I finished the terran campaign of SC Remastered the other day. Absolutely hated the pathfinding (I did play SC/BW back in the days, and I know, fixing the pathfinding would completely change/ruin the nuanced balance). To me, SC: Mass Recall is a better option if you want to relive the SC/BW campaigns.

And it's amazing how vigorously die-hard fans defend them to the death. Bad pathing is apparently a feature, since it takes experience and attention to know how it will fail and micromanage every unit's pathing. I'm of the opinion that fighting an engine is less important than fighting your opponents, and is a big source of rage quits.

Queued buildings would be a nice-to-have, I wouldn't mind playing SC1 with the option. It'd obviously have to be separate lobbies, segregated from non-queued play.

Well the point for the hardcore multiplayer crowd is that micromanaging is a feature because it requires skill, multitasking and speed ("actions per minute" is, I think, the term that's used). Besides, the bad pathfinding can also be used in creative ways if you know how it works.

It's not something that appeals to me personal but I think I get it. If you're playing a tournament for sport you don't want the PC playing for you.

Jim Raynor looked more like a real person in the original. The new version looks a bit like the Burger King.

Looking at those screenshots most of the human characters actually looked better despite being low res. Is this a case of the old limitations forcing better design?

No, it's a case of better art direction, where they made the characters look quirky and fitting the setting, rather than SC2 design where the males must be ruggedly handsome and the females must be super models because who wants characters you can't daydream about amirite?

Wait, Protoss are 'plant people'? I guess they do 'subsist on light' - i.e. photosynthesis.

Yup, that makes them plants. Their thermodynamics are nonsense. They can subsist indefinitely on worlds with twilight level illumination where the meager number of photons hitting them somehow powers their extensive physical and mental prowess. It wasn’t so bad in the original game, but this foreshadows a lot of the Protoss = magic Warcraft people crap in SC2. It’s too bad- SC1 was definitely sci-if, SC2 was very much Warcraft in space.

Is this info from SC or BW or did was this established in SC2? Or maybe I either never realized they're plantoids or never got far enough in SC2 to learn this. Regardless, my world has been changed in a way it that cannot be undone. Plants/cyblorg plants. The things my 10 year old self never knew.

And it's amazing how vigorously die-hard fans defend them to the death. Bad pathing is apparently a feature, since it takes experience and attention to know how it will fail and micromanage every unit's pathing. I'm of the opinion that fighting an engine is less important than fighting your opponents, and is a big source of rage quits.

Queued buildings would be a nice-to-have, I wouldn't mind playing SC1 with the option. It'd obviously have to be separate lobbies, segregated from non-queued play.

Is baseball a better game than basketball? It's subjective when it comes to games. I never found the original Starcraft unplayable even after I played AOE2's 'modernized' controls.

Shit all you want about our "weird" taste, but BW was and still is the most balanced, and arguably the best RTS game ever made. Huge part of it thanks to those weird "features" and limitations imposed on BW.

There are lots of game with those modern features that you guys loved so much. Mbs, unlimited unit selection, smart cast, perfect pathfinding, etc. Hell, Blizzard even release one. it's called SC2. and with the state of balance in SC2, I'm glad Blizzard doesn't change anything in SCR.

One of the most important thing that SC:R brings that isn't really stressed in the article, is that the new Matchmaking system is similar to the WC3 and SC2 systems where, after a few "qualification games", you will mostly play matches against opponents with a similar skill level.

A big issue with vanilla Starcraft was that you had to find or create custom games and would usually end up in an unfair match due to the spread of player skill levels.

This allows players to have rather fair matches at all skill levels, this is WONDERFUL for casual old farts like most of the Arsians posting in this very thread

One of the most important thing that SC:R brings that isn't really stressed in the article, is that the new Matchmaking system is similar to the WC3 and SC2 systems where, after a few "qualification games", you will mostly play matches against opponents with a similar skill level.

A big issue with vanilla Starcraft was that you had to find or create custom games and would usually end up in an unfair match due to the spread of player skill levels.

This allows players to have rather fair matches at all skill levels, this is WONDERFUL for casual old farts like most of the Arsians posting in this very thread

Maybe they could make a single player only "migraine free" mode that fixes the pathfinding and raises the unit group cap.

Those two changes alone would make it a lot more enjoyable

I'll give you pathfinding. But the unit group cap was only an issue until I realized I could assign numerical keys to groups and effectively have a 144 unit group - way more than I was personally capable of managing at once.

Maybe they could make a single player only "migraine free" mode that fixes the pathfinding and raises the unit group cap.

Those two changes alone would make it a lot more enjoyable

I'll give you pathfinding. But the unit group cap was only an issue until I realized I could assign numerical keys to groups and effectively have a 144 unit group - way more than I was personally capable of managing at once.

Now building queueing? That I'd take.

Who needs to manage a 144 unit group? At that point you just throw them at the enemy and they die.

Just saying I don't remember contemporary games like C&C having such a tight limit.

One of the most important thing that SC:R brings that isn't really stressed in the article, is that the new Matchmaking system is similar to the WC3 and SC2 systems where, after a few "qualification games", you will mostly play matches against opponents with a similar skill level.

A big issue with vanilla Starcraft was that you had to find or create custom games and would usually end up in an unfair match due to the spread of player skill levels.

This allows players to have rather fair matches at all skill levels, this is WONDERFUL for casual old farts like most of the Arsians posting in this very thread

See you on the ladder

Yes but isn't that in the free version?

No. Blizzard decided to make Matchmaking & ladder exclusive to the Remastered version.

It's important to keep the quirks and control limitations for competitive play.

I think it's pretty hard to argue that the single player campaign wouldn't be improved by better pathing, larger control groups, command queuing, etc.

I think this is a fair compromise, since the single player campaign wasn't really a test of difficulty anyways.

I think the greater emphasis on control and mechanics actually opens up the game more. BW's meta was always much less rock/paper/scissors than SC2 because of that. Excellent control, as well as mistakes, can make disadvantaged strategies succeed.

I loved Stracraft and Broodwar when I was younger, but nostalgia can only get you so far. The pathfinding and incredibly obtuse UI make it more frustrating than fun unless you're a complete diehard. Having said that, the redone art looks fantastic, and I wish I could play SCII with this style.

As much as I love old games, I find RTS to be one of the rare genres that can be very hard to go back and revisit. Interface improvements over the decades can make old RTS games hard to appreciate.

The very first RTS I played was Dune 2 on the Genesis. I loved it at the time, but just thinking about playing that again, using the D-pad to move the cursor, is painful. Warcraft 2 (let alone Warcraft 1) would probably be a real chore.

I really hope Warcraft 3 gets the same treatment, since it remains my favorite RTS and I would love to have a larger playerbase available for matchmaking.

I loved Stracraft and Broodwar when I was younger, but nostalgia can only get you so far. The pathfinding and incredibly obtuse UI make it more frustrating than fun unless you're a complete diehard. Having said that, the redone art looks fantastic, and I wish I could play SCII with this style.

One of the most important thing that SC:R brings that isn't really stressed in the article, is that the new Matchmaking system is similar to the WC3 and SC2 systems where, after a few "qualification games", you will mostly play matches against opponents with a similar skill level.

A big issue with vanilla Starcraft was that you had to find or create custom games and would usually end up in an unfair match due to the spread of player skill levels.

This allows players to have rather fair matches at all skill levels, this is WONDERFUL for casual old farts like most of the Arsians posting in this very thread

See you on the ladder

Yes but isn't that in the free version?

No. Blizzard decided to make Matchmaking & ladder exclusive to the Remastered version.

As much as I love old games, I find RTS to be one of the rare genres that can be very hard to go back and revisit. Interface improvements over the decades can make old RTS games hard to appreciate.

The very first RTS I played was Dune 2 on the Genesis. I loved it at the time, but just thinking about playing that again, using the D-pad to move the cursor, is painful. Warcraft 2 (let alone Warcraft 1) would probably be a real chore.

How about Herzog Zwei.

I was playing that off and on still as recently as um...10 years ago. I wonder if I could still go back to it now...

As much as I love old games, I find RTS to be one of the rare genres that can be very hard to go back and revisit. Interface improvements over the decades can make old RTS games hard to appreciate.

The very first RTS I played was Dune 2 on the Genesis. I loved it at the time, but just thinking about playing that again, using the D-pad to move the cursor, is painful. Warcraft 2 (let alone Warcraft 1) would probably be a real chore.

I really hope Warcraft 3 gets the same treatment, since it remains my favorite RTS and I would love to have a larger playerbase available for matchmaking.

I loved Stracraft and Broodwar when I was younger, but nostalgia can only get you so far. The pathfinding and incredibly obtuse UI make it more frustrating than fun unless you're a complete diehard. Having said that, the redone art looks fantastic, and I wish I could play SCII with this style.

Many people thought the RPG characters in Warcraft 3 were annoying for an RTS. If they were like me they played Starcraft to get the pure RTS experience.

Then Starcraft II came out and they went in the same direction as warcraft 3. I do not consider Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 to be as great as Starcraft and Warcraft 1&2.

Then I mistakenly thought the movie trailer was what I had secretly hoped and wished for: Warcraft 4: Orcs Vs Humans. No RPG characters; just a straight up highly balanced RTS experience. If you have the features of starcraft 2 and limit it to 2 balanced races; you could have the next major eSport.